


Feast Like It's Your Last

by SquirrellyThief



Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: A serious piece, Biting, Dreams are theaters of the mind, Edgar-lives!AU, Extreme Biting, I guess????, M/M, Nny's POV, Present Tense, Sex Dreams, Slow Build, Vore, Way too much monologuing, and your headvoice makes ill-fitting approximations that you take way too seriously, internalized melodramatic posturing, just for a second there, quasi-erotic psuedo-cannibalism, some implied frottage in the background, takes 13 pages of convincing just to get to a kiss, weirdly introspective foreplay, what happens when your brain forgets the word "horny"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:14:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26383951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquirrellyThief/pseuds/SquirrellyThief
Summary: Fight all you want. But when the mind quiets, the flesh will obey…There’s a reason he doesn’t sleep. All those times things go sideways, and he loses control of what his brain projects. The temporary realities it conjures up. The memories it pulls out of shallow graves. The subtle details and symbolism that might be used against him upon waking…Like -just as an example, nothing too specific- the desire to devour one’s only friend.
Relationships: Johnny "Nny" C./Edgar Vargas
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Feast Like It's Your Last

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a serious piece lacking in the canon-typical wackiness. I’ve rewritten this motherfucker three times now and I really have no excuse for anything that happens herein. Pacing and restraint? God, I wish I knew them.
> 
> Really: I was just listening to _Was Ich Liebe_ and _Weit Weg_ on repeat and Processing My Own Existential Stress then it became a: “I can make this sucker good, WATCH ME” project I couldn’t let go. So. Yeah.
> 
> I don’t know if I should apologize to you guys or to God for this one. Probably both. I just desperately needed to post it so I could put it to bed and stop tinkering with it. I have no other excuses.

Johnny doesn’t remember how they got to this point. Just blinked and they were there. Sitting on his sofa at one in the morning, silent, staring each other down. It’s a familiar tableau for them after eight months of Edgar narrowly escaping a post-life career as cheap paint. But something is off this time. There’s a strange energy in the air. Something terrible and powerful. Like raw electricity slicing through a dry tree and leaving it to burn. Words have been spoken, words he doesn’t remember, but they’ve cut through the air like a blow that doesn’t connect. Just surges adrenaline in the heart with the threat of something worse.

Was it him? He wonders, trying to drudge up a memory that might not even exist. Had he said something wrong? Called upon this lightning strike? Had _Edgar?_ He doubted the last one. Rage wasn’t clicking into place. _Nothing_ was clicking into place. His brain was just a stalling engine, revving but never turning over. Not going anywhere for all its obnoxious growling.

Edgar is watching him. Waiting for something. Sitting on the opposite cushion of the couch, one leg tucked under him. His hands are folded in his lap, neat but a little fidgety. His eyes are obscured by the glare of light off his glasses. Johnny hates when they do that. Hates when he can’t see where Edgar’s looking. When the blinds are drawn on the windows to his soul. Not that peering in ever did him much good.

It’s the principle of the thing.

He wants to reach over and pull them off Edgar’s face. Snap the flimsy things in half. Blind Edgar to the world; make him powerless and weak and human again instead of this stoic, potent thing he is right now. When had he gotten like this? Had he always been this way? Johnny recalled Edgar strung up on metal wires, a hair’s breadth from permanent erasure for no crime other than being available. ~~Among other things~~. Chin high, defiant, voice even. _Fuck fear. I have nothing to fear._ Compelling and endearing even in mortal peril. Dangerously, disastrously calm. Numb to pain, to fear, to hate, and all the things Johnny knew how to inflict. A wall for him to rail against with no fear of it coming down. Stone.

 _But even stone erodes over time._ The voice is distant. Faint. Staticky like through a poor radio signal and sounding far too much like his own voice for his liking.

Edgar’s head tips. Almost like he heard the voice too. Maybe he’d said that part out loud.

Should they be talking? This silence feels strange. Awkward. Different. Like a noticeable absence. A ring in the dust on a bookshelf and something goes here. Something was stolen. Something important. A pivotal piece that Johnny can’t find amid the scattered knickknacks of his mind.

His own hands flex against the cushion in front of him. Claw at the deteriorating corduroy until it frays and splits and the stuffing pokes out. His jaw trembles and he clenches his teeth together to stop it. Where is it? Where is this thing? Why can’t he remember? Where did he put it? It must be here somewhere. He wants…. Something. But he can’t figure it out.

“Are you okay?” Edgar’s voice is delicate. Soft and fine like the strains of a well-played piano. It drives him crazy: that gentleness when one expects abrasion and annoyance. He wants to shake him; grab him by the shoulders and demand his anger. Demand his _fear_ until Edgar’s voice gets loud and cracks and breaks like all the other voices do when they’ve had enough of him. Not patter sweetly like rain against the broken windows in his head. “Nny?”

He should have never told him about the nickname. When he had, he’d thought it was of no consequence. Edgar was supposed to be _dead_ minutes after that particular confession. But no. Now he has that too. And it does things to him. Fogs up his head. Makes him forget what he was talking about with his voices. Derails his train of thought so it crashes cataclysmically into the present. The here and the now and the confusion and the _goddamn it what is supposed to go in this space? What is happening?!_

Johnny glances up at him. He should have killed Edgar when he had the chance. He’s much too powerful now. “Yeah,” Johnny forces himself to say, just so Edgar won’t prompt him again and make it worse. His voice sounds raspier than usual. From deeper in his throat. “Yeah, I’m…” he lets it hang there. He’s _something_. He’s beginning to doubt if there even is a word for it.

_Oh, there is. It’s just not in your lexicon._

Frustrated, Johnny looks inward once again. Hunting for this thing he’s forgotten, but instead only finds more questions.

 _You feel that?_ The too-similar voice in the back of his head sings.

There’s a tightness in his throat and a pain in his chest. It’s lower than where it hits when the anxiety and isolation get to be too much. Below the heart instead of through it. He can feel it all the way to his spine. Crawling, clawing, scraping up into his molars. Something inside him collapsing in on itself. Eating him alive with it. Slowly.

_That hunger?_

He wrenches his eyes closed and folds in on himself until his forehead hits the cushion. It hurts in a way too deep to be physical. Like reliving an old wound. Like feeling the bullet rip through his eye, his skull, the impact of the shattered back of his head on the floor because _that_ he remembers more vividly than anything. He hadn’t been able to fully lose consciousness until he tried to move. The way everything swam; blind, his ears ringing, splinters in his fingertips as he dragged himself across the uneven floorboards to some unknown destination. He feels unfairly pried open. Bleeding in a way he can’t stop. Unable to close this tap that has been opened and so it just drains and drains and drains indefinitely but is never totally emptied.

It _aches_.

A hand on his shoulder makes him jump, but his curled-up position makes skittering away a struggle he doesn’t indulge because he realizes the hand is Edgar’s. It’s always Edgar. Ever has been. Will be. Strange how this one has become so very constant even unfrozen. Even imperfect.

Johnny says nothing. Edgar’s moved closer. His eyes are still obscured but Johnny can see the concerned knit of his brow over the frames. There’s a flash of teeth as he picks at a dark red cut on his lip. When had that gotten there? Had he put it there? Had someone else?

There’s a flash of rage amidst the draining. A sudden grease fire in his heart. It is quickly smothered by everything else. It has no place here.

The scab breaks under Edgar’s worrying. The dark red line turns bright, a shock against the paleness of his lip. Johnny watches it, fascinated. The way it wells up, collects within the confines of the split, but doesn’t seem to go anywhere else. Just a fat drop of red paint trapped in the bristles of a brush. It should disgust him. Logically, rationally, he knows this. But it doesn’t. He just watches, as if willing the drop to slip free. To drip and pull his eyes away and break the spell but it doesn’t.

That thing inside him keeps draining. He feels so near to _empty_. _Starving._

 _Closer._ The voice taunts. _You know what it is. When was the last time you felt this?_

_I don’t want to feel this. I hate feeling like this. I want it to stop. ~~I want it-~~ No! I want to be numb again. ~~I want to tou-~~ No, no NO. I want to be angry again._

_Do you? Do you really?_

Edgar stiffens when Johnny reaches for him. Not a flinch, not an instinctive pulling away, not a reflex. A freezing, a waiting to see what happens. Practiced and learned. He takes a breath when Johnny’s fingers find the edges of the wound, where irritation has caused it to swell and made supple flesh firm just beneath the surface. A hiss when pressure is applied, coaxing it to bleed the right way, pulling the split deeper. But he doesn’t pull away; no matter how invasive it is or how much it might sting, he stays put. Edgar’s body relaxes after the surprise of contact has abated. He leans into Johnny’s hands a little.

_Almost like he likes it._

Curious now. Incensed. Johnny adjusts his grip so Edgar’s face is firmly between his hands. _~~His skin is so soft…~~ No. Shut up. Stop it. _Holds him steady as he digs a jagged thumbnail into the split. A twitch in Edgar’s brow; a wince, a noise of pain in that delicate voice of his. Soft and gentle as all of his other little rain sounds. Johnny feels it like a pang in his throat. Blood coats the pad of his thumb and leaves a spot on Edgar’s skin.

He’s not sure if he likes it. Not sure if it suits him. But he leaves it there. Shifts his weight on the cushion when his skin starts to itch beneath his clothing in a way he doesn’t want to think about but can’t really ignore for the annoyance of it.

_What are you doing? What are you craving?_

The questions are internal. He doesn’t have to answer them. Instead, he tries to focus through the feeling. Find some way to pull himself out of it.

He traces the line of Edgar’s lower lip with the thumb of his other hand. The bloodless one. Edgar leans into that too with a different kind of sound; airier. A sort of deliberateness of breath. Johnny can feel the puff of air against his hand and it seeps below the skin. _How did they get here? Why is this happening? What is happening? _ Johnny notices his hands don’t feel cold anymore, the joints looser, the aches gone. There’s a slight pink cast to Edgar’s face.

_And here you thought they were leeches. But you’re the one that’s taking, aren’t you?_

_~~God he’s so warm. Fuck-~~ STOP. No. I’m not taking anything. _Weak, breathless, insincere, distracted even inside his own head.

_Aren’t you?_

Johnny tilts Edgar’s head so the light can’t catch his lenses anymore and Edgar goes willingly. His eyes are closed; not wrenched shut or forcing himself. He looks almost relaxed. Waiting.

 _Beautiful-_ he can’t tell if it’s his own thought or his voice’s input now. He doesn’t argue with this one. In a strange, absent sort of way, he agrees with it, regardless of its source.

Was it trust or resignation that closed Edgar’s eyes? He wonders. Johnny can’t decide which is the more terrifying option. Trust is just one step closer to perfection. Closer to the point of no return. To Edgar’s permanent stasis; gone and untouchable. Resignation goes in the opposite direction; bitterly prolonging the inevitable. A small, meek part of him just wants to let it hang there. Wants to leave it an unknown quantity. _Schrödinger’s Perfection._

But he can’t.

His hands start to tremble. He feels cold everywhere but where his palms and fingertips touch Edgar. He tries to cling to it. To let it wash out the doubts, but it does nothing. He has to know.

“Do you trust me?” he whispers into the space between them, not daring to be any louder. Like Edgar is fragile glass and even a raised voice could shatter him into millions of shards impossible to salvage. They’re so close now. When had they gotten this close?

He can see the way Edgar’s eyelashes flutter against his cheekbones as he thinks.

_Please say no. Say no. Say no, say no, say no. Don’t force my hand. Don’t take this from me yet. ~~I’m not ready. I still want-~~ Not yet… Not yet…_

_Would you believe him if he did?_ The voice cuts into his litany of “no”s and “not yet”s. _Does it matter?_

All it would take is a shift of his arms. A closing of his hands. Two hundred seconds. And Edgar would be _dead._ Stasis. Frozen in time forever. Perfect. ~~Untouchable. Gone. Never to be his again.~~

_It matters._

_It won’t stop the hunger. I won’t make you feel better. No matter what he says-_

_It. Matters._

Edgar has the audacity to smile. Completely unsuspecting of Johnny’s inner turmoil. Seeming absolved of his own conflicts. It’s a small thing. Subtle. The kind of thing that usually just flashed across his face for a half second when he thought Johnny wasn’t looking. “Never.”

He knows he should feel insulted. Affronted at the idea that Edgar could never trust him. Instead, relief washes over him; a prayer answered by Edgar the forgiving and merciful God. (Halle-fucking-lujah.) And something else. Something potent, powerful, terrifying. The pads of his fingers dig in and Edgar’s brow creases again. He still doesn’t open his eyes.

There is a wrongness here. One he can’t place. That missing _something_ , that draining _something_ , those pieces that don’t quite fit. He wants to- There’s a word for it, but its drowning in the water collecting under his tongue. He _craved_ that much was true, he couldn’t deny it. _Hungered_ , as that too-similar voice had put it, in a way that didn’t jog recent memories. It was too much. Jarring, nauseating, and _wrong_.

 _Give in._ The voice whispers like a sweet nothing against the nape of his neck. _Let loose your hungers._ It’s almost a purr. Low and sultry and patently awful. _It’s your temptations that make you human, after all, you foolish, fragile creature. Your wants. Your desires. Your hunger. Let them run rampant. Stop overthinking it._

Johnny tries to shake the thoughts out of his head. Rattle the voice loose and send it on its way as if that’s ever worked before.

_Fight all you want. But when the mind quiets, the flesh will obey._

He doesn’t want to think about what that means.

He hadn’t felt this way with Devi. He knows that for certain. He’d loved her, yes. Deeper than he could remember loving anyone. She’d been _perfect_. But she’d also been distant, separate, other. Not for consumption. The love one feels for a particularly moving piece of art. A song played on a forever repeat to stir emotion; to bring comfort in turmoil. Immovable but dangerous. A spring-loaded bear trap beneath the floorboards.

But Edgar. Edgar had been flawed from the start. Chosen to be sacrificed, exposed to the worst of Johnny’s batshit antics at the height of a delirious existence. And yet still he came back. Something in him surely must be broken. Tainted with a tarnish that no amount of buffing seems to remove. He’s more mobile than Devi was. Oil to vinegar. Adjusting, tilting to keep things level. Fluid and strange.

Does he love Edgar?

He isn’t sure who is asking the question anymore. Him? The voice? Something else entirely? No matter its source, he feels it like a pang in his chest.

But does he _love_ Edgar?

It is hard to drudge up an answer. It just isn’t the _same_. It didn’t fall within his metric for love. This thing is feral. Vicious, this feeling for (flawed, imperfect, _damaged_ ) Edgar, that torments him in the silences between phone rings, boot clicks on the pavement from car-to-parking lot-to-side, pricks his skin like splinters hidden in the seams of his clothing. It’s infected with rabies he’s certain; rapidly suffocating on its own foaming spittle while desperately trying to maul anything stupid enough to draw too close, up to and including himself. It writhed in his grasp, pleading, whining, shrieking for a mercy killing. To finally be put out of its (painful, bitter) misery, but a selfish part of him isn’t ready to put it down. No matter how much it begs. He just doesn’t have the heart to kill it. It would have to die on its own.

He doesn’t want to think about what that means either.

 _How human you still are,_ the voice teases.

Johnny’s eyes flick down to the bleeding split in Edgar’s lip. He wants to-

 _Just a taste._ Cajoling now. _What could it hurt?_

But still, he hesitates. He-

Everything smells like salt and bitterness and the cheap store-brand aftershave Edgar uses. Clean and inoffensive just like everything else Edgar touched. Excluding the obvious.

_You want to. I know it. You know it. Why do you resist? What do you have to lose?_

_I don’t know!_ He was screaming back, closing his eyes to the vision of Edgar in front of him; serene, calm, patient, - _beautiful_ , and Johnny flinches. That voice inarguably his own.- _Everything?_ He tries. But that doesn’t feel right. It wasn’t the truth, but it was somewhere close. _Edgar?_ Better.

 _What do you gain?_ The voice argues, annoyed. It sounds too much like himself. Too much like his own internal voice; the monologues meld into each other and Johnny can’t tell who’s talking anymore. _Shut it out. Pretend this isn’t everything you could want; a sweet medicine for the affliction you’ve suffered for years; for a lifetime and more? It’s not- It is- It’s NOT- YES. NO. FUCK YOU\- THIS MIGHT BE YOUR ONLY CHANCE. SHUT UP NOT EDGAR, NOT THIS. WHAT DO YOU GAIN FROM CUTTING YOURSELF OFF FROM THE WORLD?_

 _I’M BETTER THAN THIS._ He twitches against his own internal volume. He opens his eyes to see Edgar hasn’t changed. He’s still touching his face; hands moving gently of their own accord in the absence of explicit input. A pink flush has crept across fair skin while he wasn’t looking. Johnny knows he should stop. Should let go. “I’m better than this.” He whispers to himself, forgetting Edgar is close enough to hear him. Shaking now. Loosening his grip. “I have to be.”

_Better than what? _

_This is…_ He pulls his palms away and it aches. Edgar lets out a slow, uneasy breath. _Base. It’s-_

Filthy- ugly- awful.

_What are you going to do? Destroy yourself? Take a knife to your flesh and carve out the nerves that spark to life when he looks like this? So next time you’ll feel nothing but agony?_

Down to just his fingertips on Edgar’s jaw then down a little to his neck where his pulse, rabbit-fast and fluttery, trills at the touch. Disappointment flashes across Edgar’s features. _Why does he have to be so fucking-_ He can’t pull them away. Dark, shaking hands framing placid features. He deserves better. The thought comes unbidden, independent of voices. Just simple knowledge. A fact for one of Edgar’s little lectures. He deserves _better_. Johnny knows this. Edgar deserves someone that can be kind, can be patient, forgiving, and all the other things Johnny is not. He deserves _better_ than Johnny could ever hope to be. Having him here, like this, so pliant and willing, almost feels like a punishment. A reprimand. A stern scolding. Maybe agony _would_ be better than this.

_If I must._

He closes his eyes again. He wants to let go. Pull his hands away and retreat to his corner of the couch. He screams at himself, feels the muscle and tendons burn, like dragging a body down the stairs- He remembers carrying _Edgar,_ something that should not be as clear as it is. How light he was slung over Johnny’s back. _Breathing slow and warm against the side of his neck._ He shakes with the effort of it, but he can’t make himself let go.

_Why? Why do you pretend you want to? Despite all your posturing to the contrary: you’re not a machine-_

The will to fight in him is hemorrhaging. _I’m a danger._

_You’re always a danger. That never stopped you before._

_It’s worse like this._

_For whom, exactly? Him? Or you?_

He can’t answer. The thoughts and words don’t come even though he knows they should. He pulls -or something in him makes him pull- Edgar nearer, not fully realizing what the tense-and-release of his arms is until Edgar’s forehead touches his own. He’s clammy now, probably from nerves. Edgar’s always so nervous around him.

Johnny’s eyes sting and he clenches them tight to soothe it.

Edgar trembles a little- no, _shivers_. Why is he shivering? The room is so warm. Muggy and tacky and awful, like an early summer threatening a rainstorm that never comes. It’s-

“Nny?”

The train derailed and crashing cataclysmically into the present.

 _Just a taste._ Goading. Challenging. Demanding. _What’s the harm in one morsel? Then you can begin your fast in earnest. If you’re still so dead set on it, that is._

His tongue feels too thick for his mouth. His heart beats double-time.

Just one. ~~It’s too much to fight~~. Little. Inconsequential. ~~Giving in.~~ Easily written off as one of his many fits of pique, ~~Submit~~. If it goes sideways, just violently change the subject with abandon, ~~Obey.~~ Pretend to ignore it despite this odd clarity that has possessed him. Make Edgar forget the whole thing happened until, perhaps, he was alone. When Johnny wouldn’t have to see the horror on his face when it hit him that a piece of him was now missing. Stolen.

~~Bitten off.~~

Water pools around his teeth. His brain unhelpfully supplies an image of dog, open-mouthed, tongue out, panting, lines of bubbling drool dripping on to its fur. He can’t breathe but fights to keep the rise and fall of his chest in a slow rhythm.

 _Fuck._ Powerless. _Fuck._ Toothless. _Fuck._ Barbless. _Fuck._ Needy, pained, whining.

He tips his head a little without meaning to. He hears Edgar’s short nails against the upholstery, the faint popping of knuckles.

When Devi nearly kissed him, he’d been called away. Startled back into himself by interlopers before it could connect. Reminded, reprimanded, worked into a frenzy. What would have happened, he wondered as his mind lost volume, if not for that interruption?

He hesitates. Waiting for the voices to come. To pull him out of this just like the one before and all the others he can just barely manage to remember. To rip him back into his body. To crank the volume of his brain up to eleven.

Instead all he hears is quiet, distant encouragement, lost in the staticky hum to the point where he can barely make it out: _The flesh obeys._

He presses his lips to Edgar’s. The surprised noise Edgar makes nearly spooks Johnny back to his own corner of the couch, but he persists, driven by something out of his control just beneath his skin. He stays put and commits every part of it to memory. The resistance of it and gentle push when Edgar gets with the program and kisses him back. Johnny holds his breath through it, uncertain. He can’t immediately recall how this is supposed to go after the contact. What steps go into this particular process. Such things look easy through a pane of glass, unreal, but when it happened to you, it suddenly made no sense.

It hurts like a hunger left too long unattended. Sharp and piercing.

He pulls back to breathe and can feel the wet spot of blood on his lip. He bites his tongue to keep it in his mouth as he wipes the spot away with the back of his hand. He looks at the smudged cut on Edgar’s lip, can see through his parted lips to his slightly crooked teeth. Freed for now, the straight edge of upper incisors dig in to the split again and Johnny wants to _crawl out of his own skin._

It wasn’t enough.

The static in his head is cut with staccato silences. Like laughter.

Johnny feels a pang of betrayal. He’s been tricked. Swindled. One wasn’t enough. How could he have thought one would be enough? He wants _so much_ _._ If anything, it’s made worse now because he knows. He knows how soft Edgar’s mouth is and the taste that lingers reminds him of the tap water at Edgar’s apartment. How the fuck does he know enough to make that comparison? Why is he? He wants-

He _wants._

He kisses Edgar again, dragging him in instead of leaning in to meet him. There’s no surprise this time. No awkwardness. Edgar’s _waiting for it_ and presses back and they slot into place the right way.

It’s like busting into a bag of candy you haven’t had in recent memory. One you expect to hate because childhood you had shitty taste in candy, but instead no matter how awful and artificial it is you’re transported somewhere else. Somewhere better. Somewhere free of responsibility, small, innocent, untouched and untouchable. Carefree and familiar. And then all of a sudden you blink and the whole fucking bag is gone, and you buy another because fuck it why not at this point? You’re here. Fuck future you who’s going to feel sick. He’s a piece of shit anyway and, honestly, probably deserves it.

It’s frightening the way he presses in for a third. A fourth. He breathes through his nose to make them last longer. Forcibly holds Edgar in place by the back of his neck despite it not seeming like he’s going to go anywhere judging by the way he fucking _whimpers_ for it and _melts_ into it like he’s been craving it his entire _goddamn life._ Yes, this is surely a punishment. It has to be. And it’s _terrifying,_ the unexpected enjoyment. He likes it. He hates that he likes it. He hates to be _touched,_ to get close to people, but this apparently fucking does it for him.

This is hypocritical. Paradoxically enjoyable. Each kiss a little bit better than the last as they practice. Get better at it. Feed off each other and learn.

It feels like a falsehood. A badly told lie and the heartbeats of waiting to see if you’ll still get away with it. If there’ll be consequences for your actions. If those consequences will even matter if they do come or if the anticipation is punishment enough.

Edgar’s hands are on his sides. He isn’t sure how they got there, but Johnny can feel them. A subtle pressure just below his ribs, grip loose but insistent. There. His palms are just as warm as his face was. As his neck is. His hair has an oiliness to it where it tries to tangle around Johnny’s fingers but isn’t long enough to accomplish the task. 

_Fuck fear_ _,_ it’s Edgar’s voice in his head now, _I have nothing to fear._ _~~You can’t hurt me in any way that matters You’re fucking powerless, you degenerate heathen.~~_

It terrifies him that Edgar has this kind of power. Even if he doesn’t know. Even if he _did_ know and refused to use it because Edgar was just a good person like that. That was too much to consider, to compartmentalize. Too big to fit into any of the boxes in Johnny’s head. He’d have to get a shovel. Bury this motherfucker and bury it so deep it’ll be mistaken for a fossil when it’s finally found again.

 _And what would that solve?_ The voices in his head can still think in sentences even if he can’t. Why the fuck does this one have to sound like Edgar? Who did he piss off now?

 _Everything._ Is all Johnny can manage to argue back. But it’s pitiful and weak even to himself. His heart’s not in it. His heart’s not in anything right now but his throat.

He can taste the blood now. It was, really, only a matter of time. It’s coppery and bright and weirdly ~~impossibly~~ cloying, but somehow less disgusting than the other times he’s stumbled into this particular misfortune. His own blood had tasted fetid like biter poison, the way garbage festering in a back alley smelled. Others had always been equivalent to dirt without the grit. But Edgar’s has a strange cleanness to it. Still gross, but less so. Like everything else Edgar is. Awful humanity, but less affronting than normal. Always just below par.

 _Was that golf reference?_ The old voice was back now. The not-Edgar one. It was almost a relief.

_Shut up. Trying to focus._

_On what?_

He pulls away, panting now from the way his heart demands more attention and resources despite no real exertion from the rest of his body. Edgar’s panting too, his face flush in a strange, patchy way that makes it look like he’s been out in the sun a little too long.

Edgar’s eyes slowly open when he realizes they’ve stopped. They seem too big, magnified and warped by his glasses, irises grey at the edges and a light brown nearer the center. Like the voids of his pupils are slowly leeching away the last of the color. He’d held Edgar’s gaze before, in a variety of contexts, but never stopped to appreciate that shift in color. From afar they always looked a dingy, unassuming, desaturated brown.

He slips the glasses from Edgar’s face as gently as his shaking hands can manage and meets no resistance. There’s a second where Edgar looks down, almost bashful as the lenses are pulled away. Johnny can feel Edgar’s hands wringing the seams of his shirt, nervous with the loss of his sight. Is he farsighted or nearsighted? Johnny can’t remember. Isn’t sure he ever knew to begin with. Just that he looks a little owlish, wide-eyed and unnerved, without them. His eyes turn back up, no hint of cowering or shying away. Brave or something like it. Something taught. And it stings a little because Johnny knows, somewhere deep, that he is the worst kind of teacher.

He should back off. The damage is done now. There’s no more to be had here. The bags of candy are empty. The feeling they inspired burned out. He should take no more from Edgar than he already has.

Johnny remembers that man from Before. On the street. That filled his ears with static. The sheepish sort of look when they’d accidentally bumped into each other. ~~He’d been so-~~ The flush in his pale face, soft and pink and patchy matching the warmth in Johnny’s own ears. ~~So-~~ Embarrassed and awkward and genuine in a way Johnny hadn’t been allowed to experience in a long while without actively looking for it. _Sweetness_ , the voice in his head provides. Edgar had been _sweet_. Not cloying or vapid about it. Just a hint of it in the lilt of his voice. The way he worried his lip, adjusted his glasses, ran his hand through his hair and looked down at the pavement as he tried to explain himself. It wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t seen him, but he was sorry all the same.

The way that man on the street had met his gaze head on. Determined to forge politeness despite the awkwardness. Despite Johnny’s intent to put him on his wall. And Johnny’s mouth had gone so dry his throat hurt.

He’d picked Edgar because he hadn’t been able to see _anyone else_. Despite the street having plenty of pedestrians. Despite the full businesses on either side of the road. Despite _everything_. Johnny needed a body and Edgar had, with one sheepish little apology and delicate hand on his shoulder, wiped out _literally everyone else._

That realization pulls him back into his body. Aware of its trembling, manic energy now. How warm the space behind his eyes feels. The tingling just beneath the skin. And that he’s moved again, from his cushion to Edgar’s. A hair’s breadth from being in his lap, on his knees to make himself a little taller than Edgar. Looking down at him.

His breathing matches Edgar’s now. Slow and deliberate. And Edgar meets him, again, waiting. Looking for cues. Waiting for _permission_ that may never come but he’s patient like that. Infinitely patient and understanding and _sweet_ like that. And when they’d talked after Edgar had woken back up in the basement, he’d shown that he had barbs too. That there was more there than just gentle sweetness. More there than just a look. He had layers like a well-crafted oil painting. Chiaroscuro and depth of shadow instead of just all light. And in a way, Johnny had been grateful then that Edgar would be dead soon.

Had been grateful when he let Edgar go that they wouldn’t ever see each other again. But then they’d bumped into each other. And then again. And then the phone calls and suddenly they were _arranging_ to meet in person again and there was something _there_. Something he _wanted_. Something _went here and he couldn’t name it. He didn’t want to name it because naming it meant admitting he was wrong. It meant admitting he was a hypocrite with no willpower. It meant admitting he wanted to-_

Edgar is so close. Inching closer, drawing him back in like a magnet. So warm. So unbelievably-

It’s only when one of the hands on his side leaves in favor of the back of the couch that Johnny realizes he’s miscalculated somewhere. He’s let himself be too distracted. And now a single little underestimation has rippled out. Snowballed. Now Edgar’s looking _up at him_ and it’s predatory, all blown pupils, flush skin, and better leverage. He went from mild unassuming, delicate, _breakable_ Edgar, in the span of Johnny tossing his glasses on the coffee table to this. An alarm rings in every sense he has; sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, space, and danger; otherworldly and harmonious like a choir of voices screaming to god that refused pay attention.

Edgar leverages himself into Johnny’s space with his advantages in height, the leg tucked under him, and the sturdy backboard of the couch. The connection hits Johnny like a wave of warm salt water, tumbling both of them across the invisible border and into Johnny’s territory on the island of sofa. It’s so much. Too much-

It’s satisfying - _satiating-_ the way Edgar kisses him. Like he’s finally snapped for real this time. No more pesky self-preservation instincts or better nature or morality or rational, reasonable thought getting in the way. Nothing to temper him. Just open and ready to give back as good as he got from the whirlwind of crazy that entered his life without his permission and leaving no room to breathe between. It feels _weird_ to be met head on. To be met _halfway_ like this.

He wants to be annoyed. Angered that the lead’s been stolen from him. That Edgar’s ripped the rug out, rolled up all the (oh so limited) control Johnny had in it, and placed it so far away as to be unreachable without destroying this tentatively built thing entirely. He wants to snap. To shove Edgar off and scream at him for being presumptuous, pompous, arrogant in his affections. Make him bleed for real.

But all those emotions are just outside of arm’s reach. He wants them. Knows they should be there. But they don’t come. He wants to be angry, but he isn’t. Another falsehood. Another hypocrisy. Another contradiction.

Edgar leads the kiss like he knows what the fuck he’s doing. His teeth are blunt and solid compared to his own jagged crooked sharps. Johnny refuses to yield easily and their teeth click together a few times. But Edgar still, somehow, manages to coax mouths open and everything gets just that little bit grosser.

Again, he feels that niggling sense of _should_. He should balk at this, but the motivation, the energy to, isn’t there. The hook is there, the switch flipped; the disgust, the annoyance, the simmering deadly bitter rage ready to incinerate everything with just the right spark. But the fuse is blown. No power reaches it and no purchase is found.

Edgar’s tongue takes some getting used to. The inside of his mouth slightly less so. It all tastes like room temperature tap water: dull and uninteresting. But, after every breath through his nose, Edgar makes this _sound_ , too quiet to be a moan but too drawn out to be a hum. Like a purr. And it dissolves like cotton candy on Johnny’s tongue. All sweetness and air and heat.

 _Will you ever get this chance again?_ It cuts through the fuzzy static in his head but is still distant and unclear.

Nothing. Silence. That’s all he has by way of a response. Sentences just weren’t coming to him anymore. The metaphysical and philosophical aspects of the world melted away. His reality existed solely within the realm of the _physical_. Just sensation now. The movement of a slightly sandpapery jaw under his hand. The ragged lines of scars through cotton jersey. Knuckles digging into his ribcage attached to fingers threatening to tear his shirt. Warm air on his cheek. A tongue in his mouth, his tongue in a different mouth; still gross but working around that. Heat finds places to pool under his skin and settle, ferment, turn toxic.

 _Feast._ The voices in his head commanded, layering over each other into a single, discordant tone he felt vibrating in his chest. Like bass was cranked up too high. _Feast… for this meal might be your last._

Johnny doesn’t argue this time. Doesn’t fight it because he doesn’t want to. He’s starving, has been starving for ages, and Edgar is so, so close. All it takes is a flex of muscle in his jaw and his teeth sink in. Something- _Edgar’s tongue_ , higher brain function helpfully supplies- gives. Punctures unnaturally beneath the force of the bite. Pops like frozen strawberries left out to thaw; the structural integrity obliterated from within by jagged shards of ice.

Liquid floods his mouth. Chokes him for a second and he’s drowning in it until he remembers how to swallow and breathe through his nose at the same time. The tastes of iron and corn syrup coat his mouth and settle in the crevices of his teeth with every sickly mouthful. Clean and mundanely pleasant just like the rest of Edgar.

He feels Edgar gasp more than he hears it. The way his shoulders hitch up in surprise under Johnny’s arms. But he doesn’t pull back. Doesn’t push away. Doesn’t fight even as he bleeds. Even as Johnny finds that split in his lip again with the flat of his tongue and bites him there too to see if it tastes any different. It doesn’t, but the flesh is softer there. Yields differently to the abuse.

 _Feast._ Something deep in the pit of him, so deep he can’t reach it, chants with a religious fervor. _Feast._

He bites again and something catches between the jagged points of his back teeth. Bitter, fatty, and addictive like bad, cheap chocolate. Meant to be eaten by the handful and quickly forgotten between pieces.

With every new piece torn away Edgar tenses, makes a soft noise of pain, then shivers. He refuses to go still, though and Johnny can feel the bloody bite marks he’s leaving behind with every renewed kiss. After a while, Edgar shifts; one arm propping himself up on the arm of the couch, supporting his weight while the other finds Johnny’s shirt hem and slips under. Warm, delicate fingertips skirt across the lower edge of Johnny’s ribs and his brain cannot find a single, solitary fuck to give about that particular contact.

Johnny’s heart finds its way back into his throat when he runs out of spaces to puncture. His bites just sinking in to pulpy, slick flesh instead of bursting through skin. There’s a whirring in the back of his thoughts; the fan’s on and rational thought will return once everything’s cooled off. But he doesn’t _want_ rational thought. Everything is _off_ and _peaceful_ and _fine_. Nothing needs to kick back on yet.

So, he moves on. Using swollen, sensitive lips to guide his way, Johnny tilts his head, and follows the line of Edgar’s jaw to the pulse point on his neck. He feels it, fluttering and fast just beneath the skin, entirely too close to the surface to be safe. His teeth don’t sink in quite so easily here; tendon and sinew stand firm at first. He has to dig his nails into the short, fine scruff at the base of Edgar’s skull to hold him steady and push him into the wound. Eventually, with enough pressure, the skin breaks. Another flood of iron and drug store Easter candy on clearance.

Edgar makes a noise that isn’t quite human; thick and wet, low and loud from the chest. Johnny feels it rattle his eardrum and vibrate through his teeth. When he finally lets go, muscle and skin catching in the uneven crags of lower incisors, the hand on Johnny’s side moves down. It stops at his hip and tugs, until lying on the couch is a bit easier.

Johnny tries not to think too much. On some level he registers that he’s flat on his back, one bent knee pressed into the back of the couch, one booted foot propped up on the edge of the coffee table, Edgar’s whole body somewhere in between all weight and heat and solidity. He can feel the scratch of couch stuffing against the small of his back and is vaguely certain that it should bother him as much as the collar of his shirt digging into his neck does. He’s trembling a little.

The tendons in the shoulder resist teeth a little better. Something cracks and there’s no satisfying flood to soothe the gluttonous brittle dryness of his throat. But Edgar moans again, deep and low, and the arm and leg holding him mostly aloft buckle and they’re pressed together; his feelings on his predicament suddenly obvious and digging into his trapped assailant’s thigh.

_He likes it. Of course, he does._

Edgar shifts, rocking his hips just a little, a high needy sound caught in his throat. What little brain power Johnny still had clicks off entirely. No cognitive output. No planning a next step. No contradictions or doubts. Just darkness and urges, heat and hunger and _yes do that again._

Encouraged by the lack of retaliation, Edgar does. Without the element of surprise, the shutdown is really more of a power surge. A flicker. But it leaves his heart racing and his skin tingling and _goddamn he feels alive_.

 _Ravenous_.

Another bite. Clench the jaw until it yields. Rip. Tear. Dig in the nails until they can’t find purchase anymore. Move slightly, do it again. And again. And again. Orders issued from somewhere else. Some other programming that wills the machine of his body to move more efficiently and effectively than he ever has. And Edgar shudders for it, these strange commands. Whimpers under the abuse but takes it anyway. Leans into it anyway. Touches back and looks for purchase at Johnny’s hip, his thigh, the hollow his throat where Edgar’s mouth lay still blood-wet and torn. Blunt, even teeth scrape lightly against skin made damp by his panting against it, waiting for a courage to bite back that never comes.

What he does do, instead, is dive in for a kiss in between gnawings. He leads with his tongue, fearless. The ragged edges disquietingly smooth and bright tasting. His hands wander and Johnny doesn’t even care; the pull of zippers undone doesn’t even register. A feather light touch that drifts too low and makes his whole body twitch doesn’t faze him. He can’t think enough to recoil. He can’t think at _all._

When they break apart Edgar tips his head the other way, offering up planes of smooth, unmarred skin.

Johnny obliges him and the chanting in his chest somehow gets worse. _Feast. Feast. Feast!_

But he can barely hear it over Edgar panting, “Yes. Oh, God, yes” in one ear. The jostling rattle of the coffee table as he uses it for leverage in the other. And the dangerous creaking of the couch’s frame under his back.

He feels monstrous in those moments. Something other than human, more than human, _worse_ than human could ever fear to be. And spiraling, powerful beyond comprehension with every new bite. Every fresh coat of paint. For every touch, every joint, every pulse-point a mouth of razor teeth. To sink in, consume. Full at every angle, point of entry, point of _contact_. Overflowing, over-taut, _overwhelmed._ Drowning in that monstrosity of sugared iron and vicious, savage hunger. The need to bite-chew-swallow, feeding on the flesh of the sinful, the degenerate, the base and the vile.

Ripping those nasty qualities out of Edgar. Tipping him closer to perfection by a force he wouldn’t dare resist now. If he could be bothered to stop moaning like a whore for the privilege first.

Something breaks. He gulps down a breath of air and the world lurches unsettlingly. Snaps like a broken rubber band slingshot. Everything spins, jolts, plops him back down on the couch, face down and alone. That last crash rises to meet him, and he knows he can’t escape it. He’s too far gone. All he can do is press his forehead into the cushion, dig his nails into the back of his neck, hold his breath, and wait for it to wring him dry.

The aftershocks felt like cramps in a deadened limb, but somehow his entire body. When he breathes again, he’s hollowed out. Empty. Trembling and breathless for the suddenness of it. His limbs relax, falling limply on the sofa. Johnny stays like that for a while, catching his breath and trying to keep complex thought firmly in the _off_ position.

_Interesting dream?_

So much for that.

Johnny peers up at the porcelain figure staring at him imperiously from the coffee table. He was damn sure he hadn’t left it there. “Not now.”

Laughter in the back of his head. Johnny tries to ignore it and pushes himself up to sitting, but his legs prove too numb and weak for anything beyond that. The itch of drying sweat settles around his temples and something else across his cheek. He drags the heel of his hand across his face and it comes back slightly damp. Drooling in his sleep. “Ugh. Ew.” He scrubs at the rest of that side of his face, desperate to distract himself from the worse crimes his body has committed this fine Thursday evening.

_You seem awfully tense considering-_

“Fuck. Off.” He growls at the figure.

_What? Post-nut clarity not doing it for you?_

He kicks the figure off the table as hard as he can manage. It bounces as if it were plastic and rolls in a lazy half circle.

_Rude._

On shaky legs and trembling arms, Johnny hauls himself off the sofa and down the hall to the bathroom. He cranks the water to its hottest setting and bangs on the wall with the side of his fist to get the pipes to cooperate. His hand complains, but nothing snaps this time.

His reflection is damning; all flush-faced and dark eyed and sweaty. He swings open the medicine cabinet with enough force that it _cracks_ and shards of glass tumble to the floor. A half dozen roaches scurry out of the seams to find better hiding spots. And still he turns his back to the mirror, his eyes closed tight until he’s under a spray that scalds his skin to the point of pain.

_You think just because you kick me off a table, we can avoid chatting about this?_

“Goddamn it!” he gets a mouthful of water for the effort of shouting. Turning away he sputters. “Leave me alone!”

 _No._ _This is useful._ The voice in his head muses. _There seems to be humanity in you after all. When was the last time you even indulged in something like this?_ A long, thoughtful pause. _Have you ever?_

“I meant what I said,” Johnny growls at nothing in particular.

 _You’d just regenerate._ The voice is flippant tonight. Johnny wonders if throwing it off the neighbor’s roof would be sufficient to smash the damn thing. _You always do. No point in causing yourself undue grief with self-castration out of spite._

Johnny runs his hands over his face and claws at his hair to get the nervous energy out. He considers scrubbing soap into his eyes just for a distraction. He could almost hear that distant personality shuffling through a file cabinet in his head. Reading over the minutes of the dream distractedly as one might a piece of junk mail.

Why is his brain like this?

A beat. Johnny imagines a page turning.

 _Plus,_ it’s still talking. Why is it still talking? _It’s not like that would make the dreams stop either. Let’s be completely honest with ourselves._

Johnny really didn’t even want to consider the possibility of their being more dreams. The idea blows up a balloon in his chest and twists it into that default dog shape aspiring clowns start with. Something pulses, deep and unreachable. Where the voices had gone when they were chanting.

_I’m surprised. Edgar of all people._

“I _like_ Edgar,” Johnny mumbles, defensive even to himself. That’s the one thing about this whole awful business that _wasn’t_ weird and affronting. Or, if he was in rare form and being _totally_ honest: all that abnormal. One tended to be close to one’s friends. Especially if one had friends as patient ~~and sweet~~ as Edgar.

 _Fair point._ The voice concedes. _But the aggression is an interesting touch._

“Do not.” Again, growling at the tile in the absence of a proper target.

But the voice is still lilting and teasing, carefree like school yard children exposing the weird kid’s first crush to the entire student body and most of the staff just to watch his heartbreak at the rejection he might not have had to endure otherwise. Heartlessly amused. _You want to devour him._

 _ENOUGH._ It’s louder in his head than he could have ever hoped to be out loud. He feels tight and knotted up under his skin. The dream comes back to him in bits and pieces. The hunger, the touching, the warmth.

But the voices never listen to his demands. New guy was no exception. _Craving him inside you? I didn’t peg you for the typ-_

Johnny reaches for the faucet knobs and cranks the water to cold until he hits resistance. In the three second delay his shitty pipes offer him, he turns back around. One hand reaches up to grasp the curtain rod, the other digs into the deep grout and uneven tiling. When the shower head sputters out a spray of frigid needles, it hits him in the most concave part of his chest.

But the scream it pulls out of him is pure rage.


End file.
